Tracing the steps that take me somewhere.

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016

American Shake

Due to the time difference between continents I had to wait until this morning to find out who won the election. It made me think back to the morning after the UK voted to Brexit. The result was just as surprising. The Donald managed to squeak out a victory in convincing fashion. I guess he won’t be questioning the results of this election.

In the speech he gave in the morning he sounded more congenial and respectful from the man that was running his mouth throughout the campaign. What will happen now? What kind of a world will we be living in based on what he has said he was going to do? Are the disenfranchised white folk going to run roughshod over everyone else in the country? Are we going to see a segment of the population that is already there be forcibly removed? What concerns me the most in looking at all of this is the ideological force of the evangelical/alt-right movement wanting to impose their worldview onto the country.

The view in Britain is one of surprise as one of my colleagues was quite distraught. My neighbor thinks that this is just another one of those interesting events to add to all the others that have happened this year. He feels a sense of change in the air as such momentous occasions have. The utopia which we were sold has become a wasteland a rust belt of sorts that we carry now around our necks. Our world has expanded at a great rate and people would like to pull back on that progress and retreat into the glorious past that has such high appeal. Families are no longer what they once were. The slogan resonated deeply in the minds of a demographic that pulled a wide range of people together to make a binary decision.

An analysis of what went right and what went wrong for each candidate will take some time. The thing about America that I try to portray from my understanding as a Canadian is their belief in themselves. When they look in the mirror now they don’t see themselves as the best. It may be vain but they know they can have it better. They don’t like being in welfare or social assistance, in low paying menial dead end jobs. There is a sense of pride that comes from their frontier pilgrim days when they build their country up to the status they enjoyed on top. On the world stage there are a great many other countries that are vying for that position. There is a continuous struggle to unseat the top dog up there. America has contributed to this world a great deal but it got to their head and it lost its way. All those internal struggles crumbled it from the inside. The people spoke.

I felt the same way as I did when Brexit happened. A bit of disbelief and then the old “well just have to make the most if it.” No amount of anything will change what has happened. The hope is that some sort of major conflict will not erupt out of it. In four years the people will speak again as to how well this president has done.

The interesting aspect to all of this is that it is a disruption of the status quo. The elite as they are referred to. The architects of this system that we are in made mistakes. These mistakes cost many their livelihoods and reduced their sense of self worth. There were those that were also emboldened by the rhetoric. Their belief that this is a certain type of country. These fringes lay dormant within the structures and were not “dealt with” as Chrl put it. A wound that festers eventually becomes septic. The system failed where it promised to succeed in the lives of ordinary people. The system is prone to sabotage and forces beyond its control. Books have been filled on this subject. It was time to shake things up a bit and roll the dice even if the choices weren’t that nice.